


catch my sanity, it's evacuating

by dramaticgasp



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Canon-Typical Violence, Fairy Tale Curses, Gen, Hurt Shiro (Voltron), M/M, Post-Capture, i tagged both but read the relationship as you like, not really but lets go with it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-07-07 21:01:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19857964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dramaticgasp/pseuds/dramaticgasp
Summary: A crack, then another, and Shiro thinks, is that what electrocution feels like?''Shiro,'' Lance breathes, shaken.





	catch my sanity, it's evacuating

A crack, then another, and Shiro thinks, _is that what electrocution feels like?_

''Shiro,'' Lance breathes, shaken.

Through the aftershocks, Shiro's mind unfogs enough to see that the blackness that was skin pigment has cracked like dried paint, and when he rubs it off, the skin underneath is the right colour, but when he spreads his fingers, the slime that hangs around them stretches into finger webbings. One of his feet is still in the water and he pulls it out; curls into something less visible.

''Gross,'' Shiro says, voice all wrong and viscous and thick in his throat, ''gross, gross.''

''No.'' Lance's voice is thick, too. ''Nah, man. You're fine. The team is — there. Nearby.''

Shiro peeks through his forearms. Dark, long-dried and cleaned scratches cross Lance's cheek and nose. Lance hurriedly pulls his hoodie over his head and after a moment sets it onto the ground.

Lance licks his lips, and Shiro says, ''They saw it in my head.'' 

They tried to dip into his memories, pull out something combustible, something they could fire. He thought that he could safeguard flammable information by thinking about something strategically unusable, like fairytales, like princes and curses and frogs and kisses. 

Motherfuckers. They used it against him. He wouldn't even insult hindsight. Motherfuckers. He didn't have to give them anything, they saw everything in his head — the mucus, the cold sticky toxic skin. Cold blood. They turned him into his momentary thought-choice.

''How long has it been?'' he asks and doesn't pretend the answer won't make him shrink like falling into a twisted spring of youth.

_Cursed._

He can't separate the cold from his bones resetting and the wires of his nerves reconnecting; can't separate the cold from disgust. Cold blood.

''Three months,'' Lance says.

Three months.

It's overpowering, how raw he feels, like red meat that he doesn't eat. And disconnected. He's lost time, again. He keeps losing time. Dis. Connected. The spark of his cut wires could react with the mist that surrounds them, that draws heat from their bodies. He's a leftover. Dis. Conn. Ect—

''They wanted to ransom. We didn't ransom, fuck them.'' Lance's voice does something frostbite-cream-like when he says, ''We've got you.''

A small sound pushes its way out of Shiro's body, he's too late to swallow it down. The space of him decreases in size until he has no presence at all. But no — because Lance's fingers run over his side, very lightly, like he's trying to braille-read him.

He thinks about Lance licking his lips.

''Sorry,'' he says.

''What?'' Lance asks, but he knows what Shiro means, doesn't he? ''That was nothing, don't apologise.''

A hand clasps Shiro' shoulder. Stays there. He sits up, arms around his knees.

''You're good,'' Shiro tells Lance. 

Lance is quiet for a moment. ''Nah, man,'' he says again.

The hoodie lies in a heap beside Lance. Lance hasn't covered him, and that makes Shiro realise: _my bare skin doesn't dehumanise me._ But he's sick of dampness and pulls it on.

''Don't look so worried,'' Shiro says.

Lance stares and then his face blanks, and Shiro says quickly, ''No, never mind.''

Lance must catch Shiro's thoughts – the way his eyes _click_. He looks more real and even as he smoothens his frown, he sounds sharp and intent when he says, ''You won't expire.''

This is the same Lance as the one who held a glass under a running tap and when it was full he said, _water downloaded_. The realness of him brushes up against Shiro's throat and unplugs his windpipe, and he can breathe a little more easily.

The universe is polyphagous, but people like Lance are always ready to show their teeth. They collect sweets and bury them in their blanket dens, build their worlds after the model of sweetness.

''I'll call the others, okay?'' Lance asks. 

He's saying: _I gave you time to pull yourself into what you want to be._

Lance's fingers said: _supply outstrips demand, bitch. Goods outstrip hunger, bitch._ Three months ago, they asked Shiro: _what is it about humans? That they pilot the lions._

Lance kneels there like the answer.

Shiro licks his lips and tastes stale water and his whole core tightens. Makes him want to upturn his insides and pour everything out and into the soil.

Shiro thinks with a headspace carving knife: _this will be just a fear of the past._

He locks eyes with Lance and stands up. ''Would you give me the comm? Keith, that little bitch. Somebody needs to subdue it before it causes damage.''

Lance's lips press together with a smile behinds them and he detaches the mic from his collar. He slowly flattens Shiro's hair against his forehead. Shiro looks up, cross-eyed, and Lance pushes at his forehead and turns. 

Shiro starts walking after him. He always would.

**Author's Note:**

> the frog prince au you had never expected to read and i had never expected to write


End file.
